From 1820 to around 1970, workers' average productivity rose
every decade.Their hourly output of
commodities rose because they were ever better trained, had ever more and
better machines to work with, were ever more closely supervised, and worked
ever faster.Over those same years, their
real wages (what earned income actually afforded them to buy) also rose every
decade.

However, after the mid 1970s, while worker productivity continued
to increase, real wages tapered off in America and then actually began to
slowly decline.This growing gap between
stagnating wages and growing amounts of product value per hour worked, meant a
huge and growing increase in the prots of American business owners.

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So why did real wages (adjusted for inflation) in America
stop growing while continuing to increase
in various European countries?

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It was because U.S. corporations did the following
things, some of which the European countries either did not do, or did not do
to nearly the same extent.

They:

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(a) moved operations abroad so as to pay lower wages and
make bigger prots,

(b) replaced workers with machines (especially computers),
and

(c) hired ever more women and immigrants, at lower wages
than men received.

Several years after receiving my M.A. in social science (interdisciplinary studies) I was an instructor at S.F. State University for a year, but then went back to designing automated machinery, and then tech writing, in Silicon Valley. I've (more...)